IB # 390-New Text

AUGUST 2020 ISSUE NO. 390 Indigenous Technology as a Strategic Moat for India NISHA HOLLA ABSTRACT Technology is vital to enabling accelerated socio-economic growth, effective governance, and relief delivery at scale. Many economies are adopting and developing technology-first frameworks to strengthen their population’s social welfare net, and support economic growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed both the challenges and opportunities in India that can be addressed and driven by multidimensional technology frameworks. With the rebalancing of the world order post-COVID-19, the Indian government must also relentlessly pursue the development of world-class indigenous technologies in multiple sectors as a native full-stack advantage for its citizens. India can more deterministically secure its digital and material interests with such a strategic moat in place. Attribution: Nisha Holla, “Indigenous Technology as a Strategic Moat for India,” ORF Issue Brief No. 390, August 2020, Observer Research Foundation. Observer Research Foundation (ORF) is a public policy think tank that aims to influence the formulation of policies for building a strong and prosperous India. ORF pursues these goals by providing informed analyses and in-depth research, and organising events that serve as platforms for stimulating and productive discussions. ISBN 978-93-90159-76-5 © 2020 Observer Research Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, archived, retained or transmitted through print, speech or electronic media without prior written approval from ORF. Indigenous Technology as a Strategic Moat for India INTRODUCTION relief response delivery; enhancing private sector capabilities; and unlocking future Technology has enabled India to respond to opportunities to deepen the moat. the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that were not even conceivable as recently as a decade ago. TECHNOLOGIES FOR GOVERNANCE The country has pioneered the development AND RELIEF RESPONSE DELIVERY of digital public goods (DPG) built as partnerships between the government and India Stack at Work private industry.1 Many of its DPGs are open- APIa development exercises with significant India Stack is one of the leapfrog-enablement volunteer participation2 that are accelerating technology platforms through which the India’s achievement of its Sustainable country is accelerating its ease of doing 4 Development Goals.3 They exemplify the business and financial inclusion goals. Amidst Indian private sector’s civism, its readiness to the COVID-pandemic, personal interaction to work with the government, especially in times transact and conduct business has become like the current pandemic, to deliver world- life-threatening, and further made difficult by class platforms for socio-economic growth. the national and various regional lockdowns. Increasingly, this model is defining India’s However, life has had to go on – citizens had to governance and relief delivery. pay power and water bills, pay for food, groceries, medicines and more, but could not India has spent a decade validating this risk transacting in person using cash. Through novel public-private partnership (PPP) model. India Stack’s Bill Pay, UPI, and other services, The value proposition of using leapfrog the entire country was ready to transact technology to eradicate poverty, nurture reliably over these national protocols and development via inclusive growth, and services. accelerate India’s trajectory towards a middle- With India Stack and the JAM trinity – Jan income economy is obvious. Further, the Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile – the country has country faces a generational opportunity in built vast databases of Aadhar-verified the post-COVID-19 new normal to re- beneficiaries for most large-scale government establish itself in a realigning global order. schemes. These programmes include the T he development of indigenous Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (80 million t e c h n o l o g i c a l c a p a b i l i t i e s a s a beneficiaries being given free LPG cylinders multidimensional moat is a reliable strategy for smoke-free cooking5); the Pradhan Mantri that will yield dual-use dividends – both in a Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (minimum pandemic and in normal times. There are three income support for 100 million registered objectives with which the country must farmers6); and the Mahatma Gandhi National prioritise technology: for governance and R u ra l E m ploy me nt G u a ra nte e A c t a Open-APIs or Application Programming Interfaces are publicly published software interfaces that allow developers programmatic access to a proprietary application or software system. There are usually minimal and standard restrictions on the use of such interfaces, such as Fair Use compliances and enterprise verification requirements. 2 ORF ISSUE BRIEF No. 390 l AUGUST 2020 Indigenous Technology as a Strategic Moat for India (MGNREGA – rural employment guarantee amounting to a minimum 15-day timeframe with 136 million registered and 81.7 million between the allocation of benefits and cash-in- active7). Unlike during the first six decades of bank – in India, it was near-instantaneous. Independent India, there is now verifiable information owing to Aadhar and the Direct This is a paradigm shift in governmental Benefit Transfer (DBT) digital logs. The DBT- programme delivery that brings radical databases framework could prove valuable in transparency and accountability throughout moving away from India’s legacy subsidy the implementation stack. The tech- system, which was ridden with leakages and supported approach helps the administration 8,9 ensure that the most deserving beneficiaries duplicate payments. are supported, and reduces leakages and During the COVID-19 lockdown in inefficiencies. Most importantly, it makes particular, when millions of Indians were government programmes measurable and suddenly cut off from their daily employment auditable, and removes the otherwise wages, these databases of ID-verified insurmountable physical friction in support beneficiaries, combined with DBT enabled delivery. one of the world’s most substantial volumes of real-time relief delivery.10 Aarogya Sethu and the Government- Citizen Engagement Revolution Direct Benefit Transfers At a time when over a billion people in India One of the most striking resultant felt unsafe leaving their homes, uncertain of programmes built on India Stack is the where and when they could contract the virus, country’s national-scale DBT program. To technology has made possible the world’s date, INR 11.6 trillion worth of benefits have most massive organic exercise in contact been disbursed through DBT, leading to tracing and syndromic mapping, thanks to savings of INR 1.7 trillion, by cutting out Aarogya Sethu (AS). It is a comprehensive middlemen inefficiencies and leakages – which tool made available to Indian citizens to map amounts to nearly one percent of the country’s their health status periodically and monitor Gross Domestic Product (GDP).11 During the the spread of the infection in their COVID-19 lockdown alone, INR 654.5 billion neighbourhoods. This shift in the attitude of had been transferred to the accounts of 420 Indian citizens, their willingness to use an app million ID-verified beneficiaries by June 19.12 to help decide their daily routines is The ready availability of databases of families significant. It shows how friction-less citizen living below poverty line, women Jan Dhan participation can support a government’s account holders, farmers and rural workers, actions to secure the national health interest. widows, people with disabilities, and other disadvantaged groups, built over the last six AS took only 13 days to reach 50 million years, was a boon to India in these trying downloads, breaking Pokémon Go’s world 13 times. While countries like the US mailed record of 19 days. By June 7, AS had over 120 14 millions of cheques that people had to cash in – million downloads – with the pandemic ORF ISSUE BRIEF No. 390 l AUGUST 2020 3 Indigenous Technology as a Strategic Moat for India running its course, more people are signing up Bharat Health Stack (BHS) every day. According to government officials, the app has already helped generate The proposed BHS operating on the India information about 700 potential hotspots and Stack engine can be a game changer for Indian has alerted over 140,000 app users, via healthcare delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing, about has made it apparent that India does not have possible risk of infection due to proximity to a collaborative platform for inter-hospital and infected patients.15 The World Bank has hospital-government information exchange. 16 Real-time data on bed vacancies, number of praised India’s contact-tracing effort and COVID-19 patients, dynamic status updates, many countries are launching similar apps in news on segments of patients (critical, severe, their territories.17 India must now build on mild or asymptomatic), and data on vacant this achievement and explore ways of making isolation wards is crucial to saving lives. BHS is the AS framework a permanent part of the proposed as a multi-layered public-goods strategic moat. infrastructure on which governments and It could, for example, help break 70 years of health providers can deploy dedicated apps 18 apathetic government-citizen engagement. and platforms. The architecture will enable Indeed, it is the most extensive population information symmetry on aggregate grouping and mass study that

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